‘Well, amen to that,’ Lord Robert said. ‘And will Elizabeth stay at court for Christmas?’

‘She has asked to leave. She says she is ill again and needs the peace of the country.’

‘And is she ill?’

I shrugged. ‘Who can say? She was very bloated and ill-looking when I saw her the other day. But nobody ever really sees her. She keeps to her rooms. She comes out only when she has to. No-one speaks to her, the women are unkind to her. Everyone says there is nothing wrong with her but envy.’

He shook his head at the petty spite of women. ‘All this and the poor girl has to carry a rosary and a missal and go to Mass!’

‘She’s not a poor girl,’ I said, stung. ‘She is poorly treated by the ladies of the queen’s court, but she can blame herself for that. It is only when there are people to see that she speaks very softly and walks with her head drooping. And as for Mass, everyone has to go, all the time. They sing a Mass in the queen’s chapel seven times a day. Everyone goes at least twice a day.’

He half-smiled at the rapid turn of the court to piety. ‘And Lady Jane? Is she truly not to die for her treason?’

‘The queen will never kill her own cousin, a young woman,’ I assured him. ‘She’s to live here for a while as a prisoner in the Tower, and then be released, when the country is quiet.’

He made a little grimace. ‘A great risk for the queen. If I were her advisor I would tell her to make an end of it, to make an end of all of us.’

‘She knows it was not Lady Jane’s choice. It would be cruel of the queen to punish Lady Jane; and she is never cruel.’

‘And the girl was only sixteen,’ he said, half to himself. He rose to his feet, hardly aware of me. ‘I should have stopped it,’ he said. ‘I should have kept Jane safely out of it, whatever plots my father made . . .’

He looked out of the window at the dark courtyard below where his own father had been executed, begging for mercy, offering evidence against Jane, against his sons, anyone, if he could be spared. When he had knelt before the block, the blindfold over his eyes had slipped down and he had pulled it up and then groped about on his hands and knees, pleading with the headsman to wait until he was ready. It was a miserable end; but not as miserable as the death he had given to the young king in his charge, who had been innocent of everything.

‘I was a fool,’ Robert said bitterly. ‘Blinded by my own ambition. I am surprised you did not foresee it, child, I would have thought the heavens would have been rocking with laughter over the Dudley hubris. I wish to God you had warned me in time.’